Agaat - Marlene van Niekerk [219]
Her embroidery basket was standing by her feet, with the tight balls of thread and needles stuck into their proper places in the pockets and loops. The high white bed was immaculately made, with all her large embroidered pillows neatly arranged against the bedpost. On her clothes-rail the black dresses and the white aprons hung neatly serried. On the shelf above, fitted into one another three-by-three, the starched white caps, densely embroidered like mitres. But all of that, plus the zinc bath in its place under the washbasin, the table scrubbed white, the kettle shiny with scouring, the hearth-opening clean, the buffed noses of three pairs of black school shoes peeping out from under the curtain in front of the apple-crate cupboard, the Singer’s black body neatly folded back into the stowaway cavity, was not enough to reassure you. The clumps of steel wool on her head, the manner in which she looked at you in her ungroomed state, there where you stood in the door, yourself with sleep-fuzzed hair and an unwashed face, with your thin shins and white knees sticking out from under your pink flannel bed-jacket, that unnerved you. You clutched the front of your nightdress, even though it was buttoned. You felt as if she were assessing you naked.
I’m coming, she said, and stuck out her chin to manifest her displeasure, but the effect of it, without the cap, was one of vulnerability.
With an odd, reprimanded feeling you went and flung on a dress and dragged a comb through your hair so that when you went to sit down at the kitchen table you would at least not compare unfavourably with her. You knew how snow-white-starched she would report for duty.
She declined the rusk and drank her coffee with tight little sips. Her chin was stuck out and she listened to your plan with her eyes fixed to the wall, her cap a rampart before her head.
You had to control yourself not just to gather again all the papers and the coloured pencils and the gardening books that you’d set out and say to her she may leave now, thank you. Why should you suddenly become an apologist for your idea? A sort of sycophantish subordinate?
But you didn’t want to give up, you wouldn’t let yourself be quenched, and you changed your tack, excitedly you explained, elbows on the table, as lightly and merrily as you could.
Was she upset because you’d seen her embroidery-work? Nobody was ever allowed to see Agaat’s creations before they were quite complete, the cloth neatly washed and ironed and spread out for inspection. And this one was a huge cloth that she must have started that very morning, only the edges had been seamed. Were there sleeves attached? A neck-hole? You didn’t want to look too hard. Those unruly wads bowed over the fine white cloth, the hand working rapidly and accurately with the needle. It was the sight of that that suddenly made you feel terribly guilty about the letter. The one that you’d read over and over again. How long had it been in your handbag before you’d eventually posted it? Had you ever posted it?
Without looking up you filled one page after the other with your drawings and slid them in front of Agaat. One to explain the structure of the terraces, wider and narrower for variation, with stone walls and connecting steps that were supposed to lead the eye to the front door of the homestead. One to explain the scheme of arches and arcades and trellises that would grant the visitor access to prettily framed pictures of the garden. Another one to chart the location of the fountain and the fish ponds and the watercourses connecting them with one another, and one to indicate the irrigation pipes. The last one was to illustrate the colour scheme, blue and purple and white and green would predominate,